Shipments of business smartphones chugged along to deliver a “solid” performance in the third quarter, but business tablet sales continued to suffer, new reports from Strategy Analytics indicate.
During the most recent period, global business smartphone shipments grew 19.4 percent year over year to hit 112.2 million units, the firm said. Business tablet shipments, on the other hand, dropped nearly 13 percent from 19.3 million units the year before to just 16.8 million units.
Strategy Analytics Mobile Workforce Strategies Senior Analyst Gina Luk attributed the growth in business smartphone shipments to “strong uptake” among business users in the Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa regions coupled with the launch of Apple’s new iPhone 7.
“Android and iOS devices collectively claimed over 99.5 percent of worldwide business use smartphone shipments in Q3 2016, as Windows 10 smartphone shipments continued to slump and Blackberry announced its exit from manufacturing its own smartphones,” Luk said.
Strategy Analytics noted the slump in tablet shipments stemmed from market saturation and lengthening product lifecycles.
“Business tablet performance in Q3 2016 was disappointing,” Andrew Brown, Strategy Analytics’ executive director of enterprise research, commented. “While Apple and Samsung continued to lead the business tablet market, iOS shipments plummeted 20.4 percent YoY, while Android business tablet shipments fell 14.1 percent.”
“One positive aspect was Microsoft, with Windows tablet shipments growing by 10.8 percent YoY,” Brown continued. “Windows share continues to improve as more models are launched by traditional PC vendors. While some of this is cannibalization of the traditional business notebook market, it also shows that in business environments, other vendors are struggling to make stronger inroads into Windows-dominated client environments.”
Filed Under: Devices
